January 22, 2014

OpenBCI 3D-printable EEG headset concept design. Electrodes can be instantly moved and snapped into any of these sections for detecting EEG signals from different regions of the cortex. (Credit: OpenBCI)

The deadline for the OpenBCI Kickstarter, an open-source EEG brain-computer interface, is Wednesday Jan. 22 at 8:00pm EST. As of post time (Jan. 22 at 3:29 a.m. EST), $194,520 has been pledged (almost doubling the $100,000 goal), with 866 backers.

“If we reach $200K, we will host … and fund … one domestic and one international hackathon in addition to those funded through the hackathon reward levels … in summer 2014,” founders Joel Murphy & Conor Russomanno promise. Just $5,480 to go.

OpenBCI has announced a 3D-printable headset that allows for printing the skeleton for flexible placement of EEG (electroencephalogram) electrodes to detect different regions of the cortex — not possible with commercially available EEG headsets.

LulzBot is donating a TAZ 3 3D printer to OpenBCI and printing supplies. “The LulzBot Taz 3 has one of the largest build volumes and the fastest print speed of any 3D printer on the market, and it can print a wide range of materials,” say the OpenBCI founders.

If you support the Kickstarter at the Research Partner reward tier, “you will be invited to an exclusive OpenBCI Research Partner conference hosted in NYC in the late Spring to help us shape the future of the OpenBCI movement. In addition, you will receive 5 OpenBCI boards or daisy-chain modules, an electrode cap identical to the one seen in our video, and an Electrode Starter Kit.”

I can’t believe the synchronicity of it…leaving here, my next e-mail link was to the Washington Post where I found a story by Al Kamen, who says:

“It’s Davos! The ultimate in networking and elbow-rubbing. Welcome to the 2014 World Economic Forum, which brings together a few thousand people each year in the ultra-tony ski resort of Davos, Switzerland — world leaders, corporate titans, royalty, entertainment celebs and media folk — plus thousands of staff and security and your usual smattering of protesters.

This year’s theme? Wait for it, wait for it . . . Income inequality! Yes, the heavy breathing will focus on this issue — just days after a stunning report was issued by Oxfam saying that the 85 richest people in the world are as wealthy as the poorest half of the global population, or about 3.5 billion people.”

Now wealthy people are a necessary evil, as they have the money to invest in new products…but the very wealthy are getting all they need from “rent seeking,” so they aren’t doing much of the investing any more.

Sure the new tech billionaires are leading the way, but the old monied people are just sitting back and enjoying themselves at various gated resorts.

It looks like more and more of the progress of the future will depend upon people who go and invest by Kickstarter.

Love the open source of this and many other KS projects. Fun to see hacker contests designed to push the development forward. I think this basic idea that the world is directly involved in the advancement of ideas/products is critical to reach the singularity. Love also the open 3d side to this one as well as multiple angles of openness is critical for the total project.

…fun to see these ideas in motion/action with things like crowd-funding also pushing these advancements outside the normal slow/bureaucratic company channels normally in use for innovation. kewl.